Knole and the Sackvilles

by V. Sackville-West

Mem: She is ready and willing to act as first Chambermaid to your Grace, to warm your bed and tuck you in, which, as she is advised and verily believes, the present Housekeeper is in no manner qualified to do.

§ iii

I have already mentioned Lady Betty Germaine, who, during the lifetime of the first duke and duchess, lived almost entirely at Knole and had three rooms—her bedroom, her sitting-room, and her china closet—set aside for her exclusive use. This little prim lady, to whom the three little rooms must have provided so apposite a frame, occupied her time in writing letters, in stitching at crewel work with brightly-coloured wools, in making pot-pourri to fill the bowls on the window ledges, and in telling anecdotes of Queen Anne, whose lady-in-waiting she had once been, since to her, no doubt, in common with all human nature, the days which were the past were preferable to the days which were the present. She was, primarily, the friend of the Duchess of Dorset, and for once a woman was installed in the house whose coiffure and petticoats the wind of scandal was unable to ruffle. They composed she, the duchess, the duke, and Lord George, a harmonious quartette, whose correspondence survives, voluminous and intimate, pricked into sharper highlights here and there by the pen of Swift. “As to my duchess,” writes Lady Betty, “she is so reserved that perhaps she may not be at first so much admired.” The duke she thought “great-souled,” and it must have been an occasion of great distress to her that her friend Swift should not always share her views:

Madam [he writes to her after failing to obtain some favour from Dorset], I owe your Ladyship the acknowledgement of a letter I have long received, relating to a request I made to my Lord Duke. I now dismiss you, Madam, from your office of being a go-between upon any affair I might have with his Grace. I will never more trouble him, either with my visits or application. His business in this kingdom is to make himself easy; his lessons are all prescribed for him from Court; and he is sure, at a very cheap rate, to have a majority of most corrupt slaves and idiots at his devotion. The happiness of this Kingdom is of no more consequence to him than it would be to the Great Mogul....

LADY BETTY GERMAINE
From the portrait at Knole by C. Phillips

One wonders whether such suggestions troubled Lady Betty. Was it possible that her great-souled friend would not be Lord Steward and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Lord Warden and Lord Lieutenant of Kent, did he not also happen to be Duke of Dorset? Was it possible that people such as the Sackvilles occasionally occupied positions due to their birth rather than to their intellect? Was it true that he, and particularly Lord George, cared for their own advancement rather than for the credit of England?—they who were England, who shared the blood of the Tudors and the Howards and the Spencers and the Cliffords? whose house was quarried from Kentish rock? whose oaks and beeches were rooted so deep into the soil of England? Lady Betty herself, who as Lady Betty Berkeley had come from that most ancient castle—that rose-and-grey castle, the colour of her own dried rose-leaves, the castle that, squat, romantic, and uncouth, brooded over the Severn across the meadows of Gloucestershire—Lady Betty herself was of all people least qualified or likely to criticize. The household at Knole was ordered on a magnificent scale, with the duke and duchess and their guest at the apex of the pyramid which reposed on the base of five servants at £20 each, two at £15, two at £10 10s., seven at £10, two at £8, thirteen at £6, eight at £5, two at £5, one at £2, besides the chaplain who was unsalaried, the senior officers, the Steward, the Comptroller, and the Master of the Horse at £60, £30, and £25 respectively, Tom Durfey living over the dairy, and the rabble of labourers, gardeners, and what-not, of whom nobody took any notice. This was life as Lady Betty was accustomed to find it ordered. If ever she paused to question its system, no trace of her wondering appears in her letters.

She had a house of her own, Drayton, in Northamptonshire, considered by Horace Walpole a “venerable heap of ugliness, with many curious bits,” which she had inherited from her late husband, who in his turn had inherited it from a first wife. This husband of Lady Betty’s is a peculiar figure; so peculiar, indeed, so ambiguous, and so equivocal, that one wonders at his alliance with the orderly Lady Betty Berkeley, unless this may be explained by the fact that he “possessed a very handsome person, and was always a distinguished favourite of the other Sex.” He was, I gather, a soldier of fortune, of uncertain parentage, or, as Lord George Sackville delicately puts it, “believed to stand in a very close degree of consanguinity to King William the Third.” William, at any rate, brought him over to England from Holland in 1688, knighted him, saw to it that he became a member of the House of Commons, and assisted him with grants of money; and Germaine, who inherited from his father no armorial bearings, was accustomed to use a red cross, which might be taken to mean that his actual was higher than his ostensible birth. This gentleman combined with the instincts of a collector a profound ignorance of artistic matters. His principal pride was his collection of “Rarities,” in which he would exhibit the dagger of Henry VIII; he believed a certain Sir Matthew Germaine to be the author of St. Matthew’s Gospel; and at Drayton, where he was building a colonnade, he caused the columns to be placed upside down, as he had mistaken the capitals for the pedestals.

This was the man who married Lady Betty Berkeley when she was thirty years younger than himself. He had previously been married to the Duchess of Norfolk, whose husband divorced her on Sir John Germaine’s account. After her death, by which he inherited Drayton, he attached himself to the Duke and Duchess of Dorset, who received him with their wonted hospitality; but this was not enough: he wanted a brilliant alliance, he wanted an heir to Drayton. While at Bristol he “cast his eyes upon Lady Betty, whose birth, character, and accomplishments rendered her every way worthy of his choice.” They married; and the friendship with the Dorsets, to whom Lady Betty was already devoted, was strengthened by the new bond. Although the difference in age was so considerable, Lady Betty, through her “superior understanding, added to the most correct deportment, acquired great influence over him,” and when after twelve years of marriage Sir John died, “a martyr to the gout as well as to other diseases,” he called his wife to his bedside and spoke to her in these terms:

Lady Betty [said he], I have made you a very indifferent husband, and particularly of late years, when infirmities have rendered me a burden to myself, but I shall not be much longer troublesome to you. I advise you never again to marry an old man, but I strenuously exhort you to marry when I am gone, and I will endeavour to put it in your power. You have fulfilled every obligation towards me in an exemplary manner, and I wish to demonstrate my sense of your merits. I have, therefore, by my will, bequeathed you this estate, which I received from my first wife; and which, as she gave to me, so I leave to you. I hope you will marry and have children to inherit it. But, if events should determine otherwise, it would give me pleasure to think that Drayton descended after your decease to a younger son of my friend the Duchess of Dorset.